I'm a magical girl in the future

Chapter 71 The Barometer of Strength

As the calamity beast was defeated, Higan and Ayanami slowly descended from the sky, while Yotsuba and Asaka were flying over from afar to join them.

"—A brilliant team effort."

Noah's figure appeared beside Bi'an and Lingbo at some point, it seems she had been observing their battle from a distance, while also providing backup to avoid any accidents.

"In that high-speed movement, with almost no communication, you could instantly understand each other's intentions and execute them without hesitation. To be honest, your teamwork was really good."

Noah looked at Lingbo and the other side, her tone filled with undisguised admiration.

Bi'an merely turned her head slightly, offering no response, but the slight curve of her lips betrayed a hint of smugness. Lingbo, on the other hand, remained calm and expressionless, watching Noah without a trace of emotion.

However, this praise made the two girls who had just arrived on the other side seem a little disappointed.

"Um... Noah-senpai..." Asaka scratched her head somewhat embarrassedly, "In this battle, it seems that Yotsuba and I...didn't help at all..."

Yotsuba, standing to the side, nodded silently, looking somewhat dejected. She'd only fired a magic bullet at the very beginning, but hadn't even hit anything… in short, she'd done absolutely nothing, which left her feeling quite uneasy.

"This is related to your training methods, so don't be discouraged."

Noah's tone softened. "You've chosen the most stable, but also the most tedious, path—spending all your energy on the most basic magic training. This method of accumulating knowledge and skills for later use may indeed be difficult to demonstrate in actual combat in the early stages."

"However, once you successfully 'open up' and reach the next level, if you can awaken your inner self, your path of growth will be smoother."

She paused, then looked around at the four people in front of her.

"In the end, theoretically speaking, this calamity beast... isn't even enough for the four of you to fight."

"Huh?" Asaka asked, sounding puzzled.

"You've probably noticed that when the Civil Defense Bureau issues a monster alert, it includes a reference value for the 'psychic energy level,' right? And the alerts for ordinary citizens don't have this psychic energy level; only the magical girls' phones do. Can you guess why?"

"Because that value is the benchmark set up by the Civil Defense Bureau so that magical girls can intuitively judge the strength of the disaster beasts."

"While not absolute, this is a general approximation: Calamity Beasts with psionic power levels 1 to 10 roughly correspond to the 'Budding Sprout' level of strength. Levels 11 to 20 correspond to the 'Budding Flower' level... and so on. Every 10 levels can be considered as corresponding to a realm of magical girls."

"The alarm for that calamity beast just now said it was between 11 and 13," Noah said, taking out her phone. "Further precise calculations have determined its psionic level to be approximately 11. In other words, its strength is roughly equivalent to a magical girl who has just advanced to the 'Budding' stage. With the four of you already at the late 'Emerging' stage, defeating it shouldn't be difficult."

Noah looked down at the remains of the calamity beast on the ground. "That's why I said it wasn't enough for the four of you to fight... In fact, two people could have taken care of it."

"I see..." Yotsuba nodded thoughtfully, but a new question arose, "But... why are the strengths of the Calamity Beasts divided so neatly into levels corresponding to the magical girl levels? It's exactly 10 levels per stage..."

"You've got the cause and effect backwards, Yotsuba," Noah explained with a smile.

"It's like asking why water freezes at exactly 0 degrees Celsius. The answer isn't 'water freezes at 0 degrees,' but rather that we humans have artificially defined 'the temperature at which water freezes' as '0 degrees.'"

"The same principle applies to the spiritual energy levels of the Disaster Beasts. It's not that the strength of the Disaster Beasts corresponds to a realm every 10 levels. Rather, after collecting a massive amount of combat data, the researchers at the Human Defense Bureau, based on the magical girls' realms, created this easy-to-understand 'spiritual energy level' system to classify Disaster Beasts of different strengths."

"In the Civil Defense Bureau's alert, there's usually a suggestion regarding whether you should engage in combat, right? However, this suggestion isn't accurate because the Civil Defense Bureau doesn't update your strength information in a timely manner. That's why they list your psionic level separately, so you have a reference value when making your judgment."

"Huh?" Zhaoxia was taken aback. "So this psionic energy level is defined by humans? I thought it was something that calamity beasts were born with."

"How could that be?" Noah chuckled. "Is the monster going to jump out and shout, 'My psionic level is 20!'? It's not some online game."

After explaining the "psychic energy level" of the calamity beast, this "classroom lesson" came to an end.

Noah's gaze, however, fell once again on the other side.

The pace of progress on the other side... is too fast.

It only took down the level 11 Fiend Beast with a single beam attack... However, this Fiend Beast was a flying, agile type, and was inherently fragile and not very durable. So, it's not surprising that it was taken down by a single beam attack.

However, whether it was the power of that attack spell or the fluctuations of magic power within her body... all signs indicated that she was only one step away from the threshold of "Budding".

This is even faster than He Yuran's progress in my own timeline, as I remember it.

In theory, the basic training methods used by Yotsuba and Asaka should allow them to open up faster. I didn't expect that Higan would be the first to open up.

Was it because of my appearance that I became a catalyst?

However, there are two peculiar points about He Yuran's upbringing that Noah has never revealed.

Firstly, there was He Yuran's awakening of her inner self. Normally, many people gradually awaken their inner self at the "budding" and "blooming" stages, but He Yuran only awakened her inner self at the "full bloom" stage.

There are only five realms in total, and she won't awaken her inner form until the fourth realm, which is really too late. Although it's not impossible in theory, such examples are extremely rare among magical girls.

Secondly, there's the awakening of the Primal Mystic Codes. Normally, a magical girl will awaken at least one or two Primal Mystic Codes in her lifetime. He Yuran once asked if there were any magical girls who never awakened any Primal Mystic Codes. Noah's answer was that such magical girls exist, but the probability is extremely low, practically nonexistent.

However, He Yuran is that magical girl who, from beginning to end, never awakened a single original costume.

It seems that fate has been very unfair to He Yuran.

However, Noah knew very well that He Yuran's mental state was too extraordinary to make up for these injustices.